She's got a cactus crown with a dot dot dot on her brow

So, perhaps this is my first reflection on ukrainian culture and language without coming from my own experience. here goes. . .

A Reflection on the names of Ukrainian months which fills my head probably more than it should.

So, the month of February is called лютий seemingly coming from the word (or at least to a non native speaker) любити which means to love. Which again could make my interpretation of it more skewed because obviously, I think this is related to St. valentine's Day or perhaps a tradition of love giving in February that is now linked to St. valentines. The Next month is березень or the month of the birch tree (I think!) And as I've been told it is in this month that you tap the Birch tree or as my host sister called it the tree that weeps for their juice (which is by the way delicious) my host family canned it and added lemon and it was fantastic. Next comes квітень, квітка being the word for flower. I suppose here it's March showers bring April flowers. . . Followed closely by May otherwise known as травень the month of herbs. After that I'm not too well acquainted other than the months I've lived here. So, November is лістопад (falling leaves) and October is жовтень yellow month. Feeling poetic yet? The Russian months from what I know follow closely to the numerical roman months that we're used to. While difficult to memorize given the fact that they are completely unrelated to numbers I much prefer the agricultural lean to the calendar of the Ukrainian language. It makes me wonder if in earlier times жовтень wouldn't have been different for each section of the Ukrainian speaking world. How long would these months last? Sometimes longer than others depending on the year or season? And when would you know that you were making that slight transition into the next. This lack of definite subdivision given by the numerical leaning calendar of our own leans itself to teh idea of Ukrainian time in general. My students are hardly ever in a rush and while they apologize when they are late, they rarely arrive early to anything. It's not that I prefer one way over the other. I will always be awkwardly early fearing that being late is causing my host or guests etc. undue concern and anxiety. But at the same time, I enjoy that there is something of a lax nature of time here. While I can't quite reconcile my own tendencies with the nature of time that I prefer, it still makes me think of a culture so rooted in its perceptions of teh world around it that it's months were given the names of the natural world around it. It may sound a little romantic and in osome ways I'm sure I'm romanticizing it. But I also just adore the visuals that come with knowing the name of the month. I like that when I think of October here, I will always think of teh yellow leaves littering the streets on my way to language class with my cluster mates in Nosivka. Similarly, I know that as these months pass it will be the natural world often that provides the backdrop and reason of my memory. Without sounding overly simplistic, I think language when wrapped in an idea to transport the platonic ideal of yellowness to the name of the month is really quite true to its form. I think that when you can wrap all the things yellow can be into the idea of a month it translates into the world around you and exudes that yellowness through structure or otherwise. In the end, after thinking about this development of language I thought to myself that I should reconcile the calendars I've been making with the names of the month, and so I'm including a picture of my march calendar featuring none other than birch trees.

In news about school, if you'd like it. . . My regional manager will be here on Thursday visiting my classes, meeting with me and the directors and inspecting my place to make sure I've completed my checklist. I'm nervous. He will be observing my 7th form class and I'm nervous about their behaviour. I know I'm not doing something right with them, they're acting out all the time. I'm looking for ways to improve my teaching with them and maybe having Bohdan visit them will push me to create something that will constantly keep them activated and engaged, but it's hard with the varying skill levels present in the classroom. Apart from that, I did create a lesson based on listening using some pop music which they loved. We listened to a song and i had them count every time they heard the words busy, telephone and call/calling. It was really interesting to see how close they were to my counts that I had heard when I listened to the song. Beyond that, we talked about why they may have heard the word too many times or why they didn't hear it enough. Sparking an interesting discussion about listening to people and things when speaking in a foreign language. And then, they were really excited and happy to have been able to understand some of the words as we dissected the lyrics a little bit more. The highlight was when they all at the end of class were able to sing along to the song using the correct words without ever seeing them in front of them! My third grade class has been altogether this week because the other teacher is out sick. They get excited to be all together, but what is more is that the class always likes to show me what they've accomplished, showing me what they do and when they finish their written work. They just like learning English and I'm happy to be their teacher. Today, one of my students who is particularly fond of my teaching gave me a hug and then turned to one of the other students in teh other group and said "Isn't my teacher Cool!" And today, I feel like I made some good break throughs with my first graders, while it's really hard to handle them as a class, they've been writing and reading better and better. I'm not sure what my end of the year goals for them are. But they know their numbers, they know their letters, they know their colours. and we're working slowly on days of the week; over, under, on. And now my and 's ownership. At the very least, I got more hugs in first grade today. I have two twin boys one who is super excited for English named Buroslav and one who is not excited for English but is excited to show me his new toy named Yaroslav. Buroslav as always delights in calling me over and saying "teacher I'm finished" or "Miss kari, I wrote it!" And today one of teh boys in my class who I think may be autistic and/or have special needs has decidedly begun to trust me and gives me hugs and wants to hold my arm and when I come over and tell him no today he said ok ok I'll listen now. So, today, despite having its frustrating moments there were some really good ones too. For this I'm grateful. I still miss everyone in the states and am gearing up for the next few weeks of meetings. ugh! But at teh same time there are great things coming out of these meetings.

So that's all for now, love and hugs!